A Second Too Late
by KaptainKnuts
Summary: When Ron decides to leave during the Horcrux hunt, Hermione runs after him and makes a decision that will haunt her for the rest of her life. One-shot for now. Might add more later.


"Are you coming or not?"

Hermione was struggling to process how things between the three best friends had deteriorated so quickly in one night. Though she knew that things had been tense for the last few weeks, she had no idea that it would boil over tonight, or to the extent that it had. The argument had gotten so bad, that she had to erect a Shield Charm to keep Harry and Ron from getting their hands on one another.

Ron was leaving; Harry had all but ordered him to leave, and now, he was asking her to leave Harry and go off with him. All because he was tired of how hopeless the mission they were on was.

It's not that she didn't understand his frustrations, she felt it too. The feeling of treading water, of going in circles with no signs when they would find their path, the sense of impending failure. She knew those things all too well. For the briefest of moments, she almost said yes, but all the reasons not to came to her mind. The War. Her parents. Her friends. But most importantly, Harry.

She understood, the terrible weight that he had to bear and had promised to help him carry the load. Ron had too, before the locket twisted his fear of losing his family, and of losing her against him.

She knew that what she was about to do could do irreparable damage to their relationship. She knew that she would play into his biggest fear. She knew that she would have to refuse him.

"I'm…I'm staying Ron. We promised we'd help. Harry needs us."

Ron's face darkened, his eyes shifting from Hermione to Harry and back again. His eyes remained locked onto hers as he grabbed the Horcrux around his neck and tossed onto a nearby chair.

"Fine. I see how it is. You choose him."

Her heart stopped. "No, Ron…please don't-" but he already had his bag over his shoulder and was exiting the tent. Remembering her shield, she quickly dispelled the charm and headed after the third member of their trio. She looked back at Harry as she neared the exit and nearly gave up her chase to stay with Harry, but she was convinced that they needed Ron. She exited the tent and was relieved to see that Ron had yet to exit the wards.

"Ron!" she cried out, but he gave her no answer. "Ron!" but he kept moving. She quickened her pace; she had to stop him before he left the wards and did something he would regret.

"Ron! Wait!" She'd nearly caught up to him, now only an arms-length away. All she had to do was reach out and try to shake some sense into him. Harry needed them, they had to keep their promise.

She had finally caught up to him, grabbing a hold of his wrist to try and stop him when she felt the familiar sensation of Apparition.

Once the sensation had ended, Hermione felt a blinding pain flash across her abdomen, forcing her to collapse to the ground, clutching her stomach. Her vision turned to white, her entire being nothing more than the agony she currently faced.

" _Hermione?"_

She vaguely realized that someone was talking, but it was hard to focus as she felt what she could only assume was blood soaked her hands.

" _Hermione!"_

She felt the blood or whatever it was beginning to pool around her prone form as more voice could be heard happening.

" _Ron?"_

" _Oh my god What happened?"_

" _Somebody needs to help her."_

" _Quick, get her inside"_

She felt hands start to move her, but she lost her fight against unconsciousness, finally giving into to the darkness.

The first things that Hermione became aware of as she regained consciousness were a pair of hushed voices talking a few feet away.

"How's it looking?" The voice was obviously male but was strangely familiar, though in her current state, Hermione couldn't quite remember where she recognized it from.

"She is getting better," came the reply from an accented feminine voice. "The wound has sealed up, but it will still be at least a few weeks until it's completely healed."

As if called upon, she suddenly became aware of a pain in her abdomen, the sensation so sudden that she was unable to stifle a soft groan.

As she struggled to open her eyes, she heard the feminine voice say, "She's waking up. Quickly, go tell the others."

When she was finally acclimated to the lights, she turned her head and was met by the sight of a familiar silver-haired witch.

"Fleur?"

"Hermione," replied Fleur with a softness she wasn't used to hearing from French woman. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a Lorrie." Now that the nausea had passed she looked around the room, expecting the familiarity of the Burrow but found that she didn't recognize it. "Where am I?"

"The Shell Cottage. It used to belong to Bill's Aunt, but she gave it to us to live in. Now it's an Order safehouse protected by a Fidelius Charm."

Hermione tried her best to dissect the information. They were safe with the Order but how had they ended up here? Before she could ask that question the door opened and Bill walked in with a small tray of food.

"Good, you're finally awake. Ron's been going spare with worry."

She had a hard time focusing, every time she shifted slightly to get more comfortable in the bed, a flash of pain would shoot through her body.

"What happened?"

"You guys apparated here", said Bill as he placed her food tray on the bedside table and stood next to his wife. "We found you and Ron outside. Apparently, you got yourself splinched, so we took you inside to patch you up."

Well, that explained the pain she felt across her stomach, but she'd passed her apparition test with flying colors. How had she gotten herself splinched? She filed that thought away for later, focusing on Bill's mention of Ron instead.

"Where is Ron?"

She noticed Bill's expression turn slightly hesitant before he replied, "He's been pacing back and forth in his room while we waited for you to wake up. He's been on one ever since the two of you showed up."

The two of them? That couldn't be right. What about Harry? Wasn't he worried about her well-being?

"What about Harry?"

The newly-weds' eyes widened, briefly looking at each other like they were trying to decide who was going to speak first. Ultimately, Fleur relented and turned back to Hermione with a reluctant look.

"He isn't here."

Hermione shot up in her bed, the movement causing searing pain in her stomach, forcing her to lay back down.

"What do you mean he isn't here!? Where did he go!?"

Fleur closed her eyes, like she was hesitant to let the words leave her mouth, but after a deep breath, she gave Hermione an apologetic look before replying, "Only you and Ron showed up."

Hermione started panicking, wracking her brain for any clue on what happened to Harry. Why didn't he come with them? She tried to come up with an answer, her mind replaying the last few things she remembered, until…

Her breath caught in her throat she had finally fought through the pain induced fog of her mind, and she remembered.

The fight. Harry telling Ron to leave. Hermione running after him, followed by pain and darkness. She visibly paled as the realization of what she'd done finally sunk in.

They left Harry. _She_ left Harry.

Her body froze as she let that realization think in. She promised to help Harry defeat Voldemort, and she left him. She was almost at the point of tears before the sound of someone running could be heard beyond the door to her room, until finally, an out of breath Ron lurched into the doorway.

"Hermione."

Wisely, Bill and Fleur left the room, leaving Ron and Hermione alone. The looked at each other for several moments, without saying a word to each other. Hermione was still trying to process everything that had happened, while Ron looked to be a mixture of relieved and apprehensive at the sight of her awake.

"How are you-"

"We left him Ron!"

He had the decency to cringe and look a little sheepish at her outburst, seemingly expecting something like this to happen.

"Look, we'll talk about this later. You need you're rest."

Hermione's anger flared at how quickly he tried to deflect the conversation, how easily he was able to put aside what happened.

"What I need Ronald, is to know why you left. What I need, is to get back to Harry, for us to get back to Harry." Ron's eyes tightened, and his frown deepened. "We promised him Ron. We promised him that we would be by his side and see his mission through and we left." Her voice steadily rose the longer she went on, until she was shouting at him.

Finally, Ron snapped. "We were going nowhere Hermione. You said yourself that you wish that Harry had had more to go on. That whole mission was a colossal waste of time."

"What did you think was going to happen Ronald?" Hermione snapped back, the emotions that she tried to keep in check finally bursting out. "We knew it was going to be hard when we agreed to help him, and now we've left him."

"What was I supposed to do," Ron said as he stepped forward, his eyes pleading for her to understand. "My family could've been dead, and he didn't even care about it. He told me to leave!"

"So, what you just take off when things get too hard! You know what the consequences are if Harry failed – if we failed. We all made sacrifices Ron."

"Easy for you to say. You wiped your parents' memories and sent them to Australia!"

Ron barely had any time to react before Hermione through her plate at him, connecting with the wall behind him. He momentarily froze in shock, before storming out of the room in a huff. Slowly, Hermione's anger diminished, only to be replaced by her overwhelming sadness and guilt, before finally collapsing back into bed and letting the tears she had been valiantly restraining fall.

By the time that dinner came around, Hermione tears had all but dried up, slowly driving herself crazy with worry. She kept replaying the events of the fight and her eventual departure over and over again in her mind.

She remembered the betrayal on Harry's face when Ron had brought up her own disappointment with their adventure. She had tried to explain herself to Harry, but Ron's ultimatum had cut her off. As she replayed the previous night's events for what must've been the hundredth time that day, she remembered the look she saw on Harry's face when she glanced back at him before going after Ron; it was one of extreme hurt.

She knew what it looked like. That the look she sent Harry which was meant to be a reassuring one, looked like an apologetic one. It looked like that her frustrations had gotten the better of her, and she had willingly left with Ron.

Left Harry.

That revelation stung the most, the thought that Harry might think that she wanted to leave him behind, that she chose her own feelings over the promise she had given at Dumbledore's funeral. That he might think she had betrayed him. Hermione knew that she had to make things right.

She knew that she should listen to Bill and Fleur and let herself recover before she went after Harry, but she had no idea how long Harry would stay before deciding to move on. Her guilt forced her into action. She had waited until Fleur had brought her dinner up to her, before grabbing her wand, gingerly climbing out of bed, ignoring the shooting pain that shot through her, and exited the room as quietly as possible.

Thankfully, they had converted a drawing room on the first floor into a makeshift bedroom, meaning that she just had to sneak past the kitchen area until she was outside, so she could Apparate away. She carefully stepped heel to toe through the house, the only noises present wasn't the quiet clatter of silverware on plates and the occasional hiss from her when she moved too quickly and jostled her wound. When she approached the kitchen, she cautiously glanced inside to see Bill, Fleur, and Ron eating silently. The married couple seemed to be having a silent conversation with each other, all while throwing the occasional glance at their guest. Ron on the other hand, sat merely playing with his food, his right hand resting on his cheek with an expression that appeared to be one of frustration, but Hermione could see the small flicker of doubt in his eyes.

She continued forward, only pausing to grab what she assumed was one of Fleur's coats before exiting the house. Once she was sure she was far enough away that she could apparate without anyone noticing, she focused on the woods where her Harry and Ron had last made camp and disappeared with a crack.

As soon as she felt solid ground beneath her feet gain, she quickly gave her stomach a once over, thankful that despite her condition, thankful that it didn't look like she had aggravated her injury any further. Assured that she her wound hadn't been reopened, she finally looked up and searched around the clearing, looking for any sign of Harry or the tent. At first glance, she saw nothing, but realized that the protective enchantments that she had placed around their campsite might still be up, so she pulled out her wand and began muttering the necessary counter-spells to reveal the tents location.

She must've walked around the clearing or nearly 10 minutes, but still there was no sign of the tent. She was positive that she was in the right place, having picked the spot because it was a few miles from where her grandparents had once lived, but the woods stretched on for miles with no notable landmarks. She was close to giving up until she felt the sensation of her counter-spells working and the wards going down.

She felt a wave of relief at having found the campsite, a million things that she wanted to say to Harry to apologies to him running through her mind in that instance. Her elation crumbled when there was still no sign of the tent anywhere in the clearing. She took a few steps forward, confused because she was sure that she had felt the wards go down, figuring that she had just missed the campsite, when she saw it.

A bag, sitting along the trunk of a tree a few meters away. Not just any bag. Her bag. She dashed forward, her mind playing through all the worst possible scenarios.

' _Did something happen? Where's Harry?'_

When she opened her bag, she found it filled with all her stuff. The books, clothes, and other supplies that she had brought with her on their mission. This left her more confused than ever. If someone had attacked Harry, why would they leave all her stuff behind? The absurdity of that thought caught up to her quickly and was replaced by a question that was even more disheartening.

 _Did Harry leave this for her?_

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind, she noticed a piece of parchment sticking out from behind her bag. In her desperation for answer, she uncaringly tossed her bag out of the way, unfolding the paper, hoping that she had come to the wrong conclusion.

But once she had read the simple message, it was as if all the strength had left her muscles, collapsing on her knees in front of the tree, and finally allowed herself to accept the truth as the tears she had been holding back finally began to fall.

Harry was gone.

She wasn't sure how long she remained there, her sobs mixing with the natural sounds of the forest, when she heard three familiar pops of apparition, and the rushing footsteps and voices coming up to her.

"Hermione!"

She could hear the panic in Ron's voice, but she didn't have the strength to respond. Her vision blurry due to her tears, she saw two red-headed forms crouch beside her trying to comfort her, but she couldn't hear them. She felt the two figures help her to her feet and began to move her back to where they had apparated from. She wanted to fight them, wanted to stay and see if Harry would come back, but all the fight had left her, so she allowed herself to be pulled away.

Fleur watched the scene with a great sadness in her heart. Hermione was one of the strongest young women she had ever met, and even though relations between the two of them were cool, seeing her in such a state was hard to watch.

She went to retrieve Hermione's bag, which still sat where she had thrown it moments ago, when she noticed that Hermione had dropped the parchment she had previously been clutching for dear life. Picking it up, she saw the simple message that had been left there, the two words responsible for Hermione's crumbled state.

 _I'm Sorry._

 _ **AN –**_

 _ **I have an announcement to make.**_

 _ **I've decided that for the next year, I'm going to be posting 1 One-Shot a month, starting with story. The idea is to post 4 Harry Potter, 4 Teen Wolf, and 4 Game of Thrones stories over the course of the next 12 months.**_

 _ **I know it seems counter productive to start a new thing, while I'm still working on 3 other stories, but I've kept putting off some of these ideas because they seemed like such a small task that it seemed like a waste of time to do it. I'll still be updating Knowledge and Power, Namesake, and Negative Regression, but with these other stories sprinkled in.**_

 _ **I'm not ruling out continuing this story somewhere down the line, but for right now, it's staying as a short story.**_

 _ **Be on the look out for more of these One-Shots and as always, thanks for reading!**_


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